Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Benefit of Doubt

There
lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe
me, than in half the creeds.

-Alfred,
Lord Tennyson

This
quote appears on the homepage of my website. It comes toward the end of
Tennyson’s elegy, In Memoriam: A. H. H., penned over a 17-year period about his
dear friend Arthur Hallam, who died suddenly at age 22. As they had done as part
of a group of friends at Cambridge known as “the Apostles,” the poem struggles
with faith and doubt.

The
love between the men, even though Hallam was engaged to Tennyson’s sister,
intrigued me when I read it as a late teen struggling with my own romantic
inclinations toward men and for God. I marked these two lines not only with a
yellow highlighter, but subsequently underlined them in blue pen, writing
“great” in the margin. Closer to the end of the poem’s 131 sections, I
highlighted seven stanzas and wrote “My own struggle” in the margin. This poem
gave us the famed line, “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have
loved at all.”

The
poem’s prologue, written after the poem’s completion—thus after 17 years of
anguished hope and doubt—seems to allude to doubting Thomas in its fourth line,
“Believing where we cannot prove.” Though biblical scholarship suggests that
the Johannine school, exclusively responsible for casting Thomas as a doubter,
did so because of disagreements with the Thomasine school, Thomas could be
considered the patron saint of doubters.

In
our cynical times, much is made about the need to believe. And cynicism IS
problematic when it dismisses all belief out of hand, thus Tennyson’s emphasis
on “honest doubt.” But to know
honestly what we truly believe, we must be encouraged to acknowledge our
doubts. Here are a few doubts that help me:

Doubt
yourself. This flies in the face of self-esteem systems that make you the
center of the universe in control of your own destiny, but it makes for modesty
and humility that behooves a speck on a speck circling a speck in the infinite
cosmos.

Doubt
religion. This comes more easily to progressive Christians, but I’d say we need
also to doubt our own religious pretensions that we’ve got the answers.

Doubt
government. This too is easy, as not even democratically-elected governments
always behave in a democratic manner, sharing decision-making power. And why,
for instance, is one who reveals the mistakes of a corporation called a
whistleblower while one who reveals national mistakes called a traitor?

Doubt
leaders. Not true leaders, who act altruistically rather than out of
self-interest. But discernment of the spirits is key: whose agenda reflects
Jesus’ concern for the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, the sick, the
homeless, the vulnerable, the imprisoned?

Doubt
business. Even business doubts business, because business people know
themselves oh too well.

Doubt
science. This too almost goes without saying, as the very basis of science requires
empirical skepticism, repeatedly testing one’s findings and theories. Yet again
“honest doubt” should not include
rejecting things out of hand, theories that have already amassed an
overwhelming body of evidence, like evolution.

Doubt
art and artistic expressions. Beauty, creativity, and innovation can be
enlarging or simply the result of market forces, bias, and deficiencies.

Doubt
doubt. Just as beliefs need questioning, doubts do too. And some beliefs deserve “the benefit of the
doubt”!

Ultimately
Tennyson, in his own study of the sciences and his spiritual struggles,
confessed faith over doubtas well asdoubt over faith in his prologue, written after his 17 years of
pondering:

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ABOUT CHRIS...

Chris Glaser has a ministry of writing and speaking. Since graduation from Yale Divinity School in 1977, Chris has served in a variety of parish, campus, editorial, and interim posts. He has spoken to hundreds of congregations, campuses, and communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, and published a dozen best-selling books on spirituality, sexuality, vocation, contemplation, scripture, sacrament, theology, marriage, and death.